While some people hate shopping, or at least profess to hate it, others enjoy shopping and consider shopping to be one of their favorite leisure activities. For some, one of the most enjoyable parts of shopping is trying on garments and observing how the shopper appears in the garment that is tried on. Shoppers also may derive entertainment from observing fellow shoppers as the fellow shoppers are trying on garments. It can also be an enjoyable part of the shopping experience to exchange comments and advice with other shoppers regarding garments that are being tried on.
In short, shopping can be a social experience. Indeed, family members and/or friends often go shopping together. One of the advantages (or in some cases, disadvantages) of shopping with friends or family is the opportunity to receive comments from friends and family on garments that one is trying on and/or considering purchasing. For some shoppers, comments and approval from friends, family members or fellow shoppers are an essential part of the purchasing decision process in that only with such comments and approval is the shopper able to overcome the anxiety which may be involved in deciding whether to purchase an item.
The on-line shopping experience is very different from the in-store shopping experience. Although on-line shopping can be attractive for many reasons, including especially convenience, it lacks the richness of sensory input that is available in a retail store. It particularly lacks the opportunity to try on garments and to receive input from other shoppers, including those whom one has accompanied to the store. It also lacks the psychological encouragement that many shoppers need in order to reach a decision to buy a garment.
Attempts have been made to try to duplicate some of the social and sensory elements of in-store shopping, in an on-line environment, subject to the inherent limitations of such an environment.
For example, the well-known catalog merchant Lands' End has provided a “Shop with a friend” feature on its retail website (www.landsend.com). This feature is described in an article written by Melinda Rice which appeared in the Mar. 2, 2000 edition of the Dallas Morning News and was entitled “Sites Encourage Shoppers to Bring a Friend Along”. As described in this article, the “Shop with a friend” feature is limited to linking two users together. Before the joint shopping experience, the two shoppers each select a password and agree upon a time to meet at the Lands' End website. At the appointed time, each user clicks on an icon for the feature. Based on the password, the browsers of the two users are linked and the users are allowed to “shop” together, by sharing the same web pages while talking on the phone or chatting on-line.
The Lands' End web site offers another feature, referred to therein as “Your Personal Model”. This feature allows a user to define a “3-D model” for the shopper's body based on inputs provided by the user, such as body measurements. When a garment is selected for a “virtual try-on”, an image of the garment is combined with an image based on the virtual model to provide a combined image that represents to some extent how the user might appear while wearing the garment. Because of the limited number of options available for inputting information, the virtual models bear, in general, only a small degree of resemblance to an actual image of the user.
The present inventors have recognized the desirability of increasing the opportunities to interact with others and to receive fashion advice on-line. The present inventors have further recognized that there are opportunities to enhance the in-store shopping experience by providing Internet-based features.